Current events in the words of the students of Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

Mithun K

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events and/ or publicly available information. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. These are the words etched on the Statue of Liberty. These words are now deprived of their honour, thanks to the stringent immigrant control program in the United States. What an irony…

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. Of all the lives I seeped through, the one in the “Secret Annexe” left the most indelible mark. It was the hiding place of Anne Frank, a spirited young girl whose promise was cut short by the horrors of Second World War. “The Diary of a Young Girl” is a powerful testament to the savageries of war and the human spirit. When the pages on the right side slimmed down, I was losing a loyal friend and the agony was at its zenith.

11 years ago, in US, a volunteer was going through some files related to visa-pleas during the Second World War, the worst period in the world history. Of all the countless names, one hit him real hard. It was an Otto Frank. “U.S.A. is the only country we could go to,” he wrote. “It is for the sake of the children mainly.” The application did not go through. My friend, Otto Frank’s daughter, would have been 87 years old if that application had not remained in the red tape. She would have lived to tell about the ghastly war herself if the US did something different.

Trump regime has now gone for a blanket ban on immigration from 7 countries, including the war-torn Syria. It’s the image of Aylan Kurdi that is coming to my mind. People are desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean, thinking, the grass might be greener somewhere else. So hapless that mothers are ready to travel in overcrowded boats with their children. And everywhere, they are an unwelcome lot. Europe fought among themselves. People lambasted Angela Merkel. And now, the last nail in the coffin is from the US. When the world was trying to become a global village, some are trying to build walls. Remember what the Berlin wall did? Conservatism is getting buff again. US became what it is today from the hard works of a lot of people, immigrants included. Steve Jobs’ father was a Syrian refugee. Forgetting the roots will not augur well for anyone. Let us hope that the Mogul’s (Secret service code name for Donald Trump) stances are declared unconstitutional by the courts, who should be the bulwarks against Government abuses of power. Let the walls be broken. Integrate them in the society. Help them grow and grow with them.

“I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart”. These were the words of Anne Frank. Let us be optimistic and let us pray for respect for the words written on the Statue of Liberty.

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events and/ or publicly available information. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Mithun K, MBA 2016-18,Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

_________________________________________________________________

On January 10, 2017, the honorable Supreme Court of India gave Kerala three months’ time to disburse Rs 500 crore as compensation for over 5,000 persons who suffered from various deformities, health complications and lost family members after using Endosulfan pesticides in the state.

The author comes from the border region of Kannur and Kasargod districts in north Kerala. Kasargod, a sleepy,scenic, but sweltering hot district in north Kerala is famous for its art forms like “theyyam” and its rich heritage and historical importance. The humans nick named the place “The Land of Gods”. But even the Gods could not prevent the humans from committing a tragedy that will melt your eyes, a tragedy whose scenes will haunt you for ever, a tragedy which made a lot of mothers to bury their children. The villain is a chemical, christened Endosulfan. True to its name, it brought an abrupt end to more than 4000 lives in Kasargod, maimed a lot more. 70-80% of the affected people stumbled on this chemical and lost their mobility. There is hardly any treatment for this.

Cashew plantations in Kasargod were aerially sprayed with Endosulfan from the late 1970s. By the time the public pinpointed the villain, 30 years had passed. The spraying was done thrice a year, aerially, for almost one third of a century. It had permeated deep into the environment. The poor souls absorbed it through air, water and touch and thus the chemical began a battle, against their genetic system. Loss of memory, epilepsy, depression and skin disorders were reported. When cancer, the emperor of all maladies, attacks, it puts a hole even in a middle class family’s wallet. And it struck, not the middle class, but the poor huddled masses in these hamlets.

Classified as a yellow label (highly toxic) pesticide, India was one of the largest producers as well as consumers of Endosulfan in the world. And it took more than 10 years of legal struggles and studies before the honorable Supreme Court banned the production, use and sale of Endosulfan in India. Since the genetic system is affected, their progeny may suffer too. Their plight cannot be overstated.

The court order is surely a thaw in their battle; they will get some monetary compensation, but an entire generation was ruined by the greed and negligence of a few. Kerala is implored to set up a center for disbursing the money and for providing lifelong medical treatment to them. Please don’t waste any more time on this. Please build the centre in Kasargod itself and not in the administrative capital of Trivandrum or in the tech savvy Cochin.

It is a common sight to behold people agitating and marching for their demands in front of the Secretariat in Trivandrum, Kerala. People from all over Kerala. The author once stumbled on a group whose image is indelible; they were the Endosulfan victims from Kasargod, begging for mercy. Pleading. They were not demands. They did not speak about rights. Oh God, where are thou?